The period of romanticism in art gave us a large number of magnificent works, including paintings. One of the representatives of this period among German artists was Caspar David Friedrich - the singer of divine being, infinity, death and hope.
Biography
Caspar David Friedrich was born in the German city of Greifswald in 1974. His family was engaged in soap making, and no one dreamed of art. However, Kaspar was good at drawing, so at the age of sixteen he was sent to study with a master of painting to teach him the primary techniques of drawing. The teenager showed good results, and then his father sent him to Copenhagen to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. Friedrich studied the art of painting for four years, and then returned home.
Artists are free people, and in search of inspiration they can wander around the world, which is exactly what Kaspar did. He began to travel to cities in Germany - looking for where he would best work. Creativity in itself requires different states: today the artist needs solitude in order not to be distracted from the process, and tomorrow he wants to communicate and get new impressions, so that later they can be transferred to the canvas in a pictorial form.
Frederick considered Dresden the best place for himself and stayed there. In this city, he met other painters, made friends with many. However, the uneven emotional state made it difficult to communicate with him, because he was sometimes sullen and melancholic, and nothing could stir him up.
However, Frederick was not a purely city dweller. He often traveled to Saxon Switzerland, the Baltic or the Harz. He especially enjoyed going to Rugen Island. All these places were quite consistent with his melancholic mood and helped to find inspiration.
He painted mainly landscapes, so the nature and the whole environment of these places gave him a lot of food for thought and opportunities for plein air.
Confession
Until 1807, Frederick performed his work in the drawing technique, then he began to paint in oils. At first, the brothers-artists drew attention to him, then he received recognition from the general public, and later the Prussian king himself.
Now the master could create without thinking about his daily bread, and he painted for days on end. From under his brush came out the same contradictory canvases as he himself was: the beauty of nature in his paintings is slightly gloomy, sometimes almost apocalyptic. He painted a lot of cemeteries, graves, burials. And if these were seascapes, the colors were still muted, and the feeling of the dominance of nature over man was created.
However, it is better to look at Friedrich's canvases in order to better understand and feel him. Critics wrote that he himself is visible in his paintings.
Personal life
In 1812, the artist suffered a psychological crisis, and he began to paint his darkest paintings. However, in 1818, everything changed: he became the husband of Caroline Bommer, a girl of nineteen years of age. This year he writes like a man possessed: twenty-eight paintings in twelve months.
From that time on, a more or less stable period in the artist's life begins. In 1824 he became a professor at the Dresden Academy of Arts, he had students.
Caspar David Friedrich died in 1840 and is buried in Dresden.
